Christian Cooper knows what it is like to lose someone and not to know why
they’ve gone. That’s why he is at sea on a diving boat with £1m of
equipment, searching for a man he has never met.

“I feel a lot of empathy for Yulia Schornstein — she has lost a loved one and doesn’t know what has happened to him. I know how that feels, and it is horrible.”

Mr Cooper has spent the past few days in the English Channel with a team of volunteer search-and-rescue experts, sophisticated sonar gear and three underwater robots, hoping to find the body of Sascha Schornstein — her husband — and bring it to the surface.

The pilot disappeared in July when his light aircraft went down at sea, as he flew from Hampshire to Le Touquet in France. An initial police statement appeared to suggest the 36-year-old German-born City worker may have faked his own death, but his wife told The Telegraph: “It is nonsense. Sascha is not that kind of person who would fake it.”

Sascha and Yulia Schornstein

Mr Cooper read that report with a mounting sense of recognition and a feeling that he might just be able to help, with the volunteers from a new charity called SARbot.

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“We are Britain’s first and only underwater search-and- rescue charity. Nobody else in this country — and as far as I know the world — has the combination of equipment and expertise that we have.”

With him on board the 60ft hired catamaran are off-duty policemen, firemen and lifeboat crew members, as well as specialist divers, all giving their time for free. Dressed in black SARbot uniforms, they carry themselves with the calm assurance of men who have been well trained and have saved lives. They are helping out because the police and aviation authorities insist it’s not worth their while trying to find the wreckage or the body, to the frustration of Mr Schornstein’s friends and family.

Mr Cooper believes he knows where the body lies, 12 miles out in an exclusion zone between busy shipping lanes, and he has very personal reasons for trying to bring it up.

“My brother went missing too, and he has never been found. I understand why Yulia wants a sense of closure, because my family has never had that.”

Steven Cooper vanished from his home in Huddersfield on his 49th birthday, in January 2008.

“There was no reason for him to disappear. He lived with his partner and her children. The whole family was looking forward to spending his birthday with him,” says his brother.

A week later, Steven’s car was found by Loch Laggan, in the Highlands, north-east of Fort William. “There was a huge search of the land around there and the hillsides, by the police with dogs, mountain rescue, everything. Nothing was found. The only place that wasn’t searched was the water.”

The police said the loch was too deep, too long and too wide to search with divers. “Of course, my mum wanted to find out what had happened to her son, and give him a burial.”

After three years of fruitless appeals, they were put in touch with Duncan Winsbury, a former fire station commander in Derbyshire who was working with a company making search-and- rescue robots.

Yulia Schornstein (PAUL GROVER FOR THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

“Duncan said they could do a search of the area within two days, using specially adapted sonar equipment, and retrieve the body with a robot if it was there. The police agreed to pay their expenses, I think out of embarrassment.”

The search revealed there was no body in the loch. “We were very grateful to close that chapter in the search for my brother, although it opened up other questions like, 'Where is he?’ Steven had damaged his legs in a really bad motorcycle accident in the past, so he couldn’t walk very far. He left home with just the clothes on his back. He didn’t take his phone or credit cards. His bank account has never been touched.”

What does he think happened to his brother?

“Honestly? I have no idea.”

His sister began to work with a missing persons charity.

Grateful for the underwater search, Mr Cooper was drawn to help establish SARbot. The name comes from the robots fitted with tethers, lights, high-definition cameras and grabs that can haul a body up.

“We can get it launched within four minutes of arrival,” says Mr Winsbury. He had the idea for the charity while he was still in the fire service, when a boy of 14 drowned in a quarry.

“I was amazed to find out that if you can find a person under the water and get them out within 90 minutes, there is a chance of being able to resuscitate them,” he says.

However, emergency-services workers are not qualified to go underwater, he says. They call for divers, who might take hours to arrive.

“Nationally, there are around 700 open-water drownings every year. Equipment like ours could save some of those lives, but the recession hit and the emergency services could not afford it, so we formed a charity.”

There are 14 volunteers, based mainly in the Midlands and Essex.

Outside those areas, they are asked to find bodies that have been missing for a while, rather than within the 90-minute window.

They took part in the search for April Jones in Wales last year, alongside a dog who is able to to sniff out humans underwater.

Bloodhounds, springer spaniels and Labradors can detect bodies, even when the water is tens of metres deep. By the end of the year, SARbot hopes to have four dogs.

Ultimately, the charity wants to train crews around Britain, if sponsors can be found. It has asked the Government for help.

“We’ve been contacted by coastguards whose stations were closed down, wanting to form teams,” says Mr Winsbury. “We have big ideas, if we can get the money.”

The robots cost up to £140,000 each, but they are prototypes on loan from Seabotix, a technology company. The sonars are also borrowed. Everything else is paid for by the volunteers.

“We all have full-time jobs, so we have to take annual leave to do this,” says Mr Cooper, who contacted Mrs Schornstein through The Sunday Telegraph after reading her story. His team carried out an initial search by sonar a month ago, and found the crash site in the middle of an exclusion zone between the busy shipping lanes, just inside British waters.

The images suggested they had found a portion of the fuselage, as well as a body strapped to a seat. This second search is being paid for by an insurance company, at cost price.

“If we charged in full, it would be about £250,000,” says Mr Cooper.

SARbot is working with Hampshire Police, who will take the body if it is recovered.

Last night, they were still looking, and were intending to continue for as long as the weather allows today.

The team are also hoping the crash site has not been swept away by trawlers.

“If we can recover parts of the aircraft to help establish why it crashed, we will,” he says.

“But our priority is the body. There is a missing person out there. I understand why Yulia wants closure, as my family has never had that. We want to give it to her if we can.”